ORCID

0009-0001-1017-8510 (Palega)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.7717/peerj.21481

Publication Title

PeerJ

Volume

14

Pages

e21481

Abstract

Nociception is the process by which the nervous system detects and processes information about potentially harmful environmental stimuli to generate behavioral and physiological responses. The process of nociception undergoes plasticity in response to injury, inflammation, and infection to shape the sensitivity of nociceptive circuits and the behavioral responses they control. We are increasingly aware that post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression shapes the sensitivity and plasticity of nociceptive sensory neurons and nociceptive behavior. In Drosophila, the Pumilio RNA-binding protein interacts with diverse target mRNAs to regulate their abundance and translation in a wide range of contexts including the establishment of embryonic polarity, maintenance of the germline, regulation of neural morphology, and homeostatic control of neural excitability. In this study, we find that Pumilio acts to limit nociceptive sensitivity through its activity in nociceptive sensory neurons. Larvae with nociceptor-specific pumilio knockdown show enhanced nocifensive responses to noxious thermal, mechanical, and chemical stimuli, while larvae with nociceptor-specific overexpression of pumilio show blunted responses to noxious thermal and mechanical sensitivity. Furthermore, we find that Pumilio is required in the nociceptors for larvae to expression nociceptive sensitization following injury, suggesting a role for Pumilio in nociceptor plasticity. These observations may be explained by regulation of neuronal excitability, dendrite morphology, and cell signaling by Pumilio, and future studies will elucidate these mechanisms.

Rights

© 2026 Palega et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original authors, title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Data Availability

Article states: "The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The data is available in the Supplemental Files."

Original Publication Citation

Palega, S., Davenport, H., Stewart, R. K., Horton, J., & Bellemer, A. (2026). The RNA-binding protein pumilio limits polymodal nociception in Drosophila larvae. PeerJ, 14, Article e21481. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.21481

Additional Files
Raw_data_staff_KT.xlsx (32 kB)
Raw Data
Table_S1.xlsx (8 kB)
Confirmatory experiments indicate a role for Pumilio in thermal noiception
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